What is wrong with Youtube?

[Santy]

These days I find youtube quite frustrating to use. I have these problems:

They don't buffer properly. Sometimes it just stops buffering and never budges. It could happen right in the beginning. It may not work even after refreshing the page.
If I push it a little backwards, it 'may' start buffering but it gets stuck again. Pause and Play might also not work.

Randomly the quality changes to 144p by itself eventhough my internet speed is decent enough. How sometimes 720p video buffers (with problems ofcourse) but youtube thinks suddenly my internet connection gone bad and switches to 144p!
Another issue is, if I drag the slider backwards (just to see a section of video again), the loaded buffer simply vanishes. If you pause, the video loading also stops. Sometimes seeking forward just kills the clip totally. At times, changing resolution doesn't work for me.

It looks like those days are gone, when you could smoothly watch even a full length movie without any hiccups. Now the buffer never loads fully in some videos.

Stop download option too has gone.
There is something seriously wrong with youtube and the guys in google don't seem to be working on it.

Perhaps they are unable to cope up with the burgeoning traffic- I guess almost half of the videos taken by earthlings are dumped in it.

I am sure I am not alone facing this problem.

 

[Safar]

Technology grows, so as the limit for new technology

Have been facing these issues on my i devices

 

[nagurum1974]

Iam also facing the same.thought internet speed.may be iam wrong.

 

[Amarendra]

Valid points, even the dedicated app on I devices or android do their own smart thing. For tablets/ phones use the net browser for YouTube rather than the dedicated app.

 

[nSinghal]

Don't us a computer (PC/mac) anymore so can't comment on the quality there. On my 3rd gen ipad, youtube has been showing some issues but I think its more coz of iOS 7 as it was working perfectly before and even the simple web browsing takes more time than it did on iOS 6.

{Update:} it seems the issues I was having with youtube and general web browsing on the ipad were due to the DNS servers I was using to access netflix. Removing the DNS settings resulted in performance of both web browsing and youtube to go back to the same levels as it was in iOS 6. {/update}

On the ps3 however youtube works like a charm. Videos load within seconds including HD videos (airtel 8mbps plan might have something to do with that though) and never stops for even a second for buffering. Interface is smooth and quick and works perfectly with the ipad. I can control and search for the video on my ipad and stream it to the ps3 instantly, just like chromecast. Seeking to another point of time in the video also results in couple of seconds of buffering too.

Ps3's performance makes it hard for me to believe any issues with youtube are to do with youtube servers but the PC or browser instead. May be try and reinstall the browser or change to a different one (Firefox/chrome/safari) to check if it works better on the other browser.

 

[cyber_cat]

Santy,

I think this link explains a lot

Why YouTube buffers: The secret deals that makeand breakonline video | Ars Technica

Why Youtube videos take forever to buffer

Solution: Force YouTube to buffer your entire video | PCWorld

Hope it helps you

 

[zervinb]

Even I have been having the same problems. Using Chrome browser on my laptop. The video just stops suddenly. Have to refresh and then go to the stopped point to continue the video.

However, youtube videos embedded in forum posts in avsforum work properly. On youtube.com, it stops. Weird.

 

[netant]

they changes their streaming technology recently and this is result of that ..
now you cant download youtube videos anymore

This is because YouTube are limiting the availability of the qualities for non-Dash formats. So you will have to enable Dash Playback to actually get those qualities.

I am looking into a way to merge the Dash formats with the non-Dash formats so you will be able to watch it anyways, but it will be hard because Dash formats are split into two files one for audio and one for the video.

check with the latest version of chrome browser use HTML5 fro youtube and not flash.
i don't have any hikkups at my end after forcing to use html5 for youtube.

 

[ketansethi1987]

I cant even watch the videos at 144p the quality changes to 240p or 360p automaticaly even if auto is not selected

They better fix this soon

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

What's wrong with YouTube? For starters... Google is!

Good grief, we don't even get to start watching a video without a fight with them over what they think our log-in name should be, rather than what we want it to be. Now I hear you have to be in G+ to comment on a video. Google wants to harvest us all. In practice, I don't care about that last one: Youtube comments are often moronic, and I'd be happy with no comments on Youtube at all. In principle, though, it stinks.

Then, as cyber_cat points out, there is all the world-wide inter-ISP shenanigans, let alone the failings of the ISP on our own doorstep. I just let Airtel upgrade me from 4Mbs to 8Mbs. Does my internet run twice as fast? Does it hell! Why not? Because most of the internet is in America, and Airtel do not buy enough bandwidth to give me 8Mbs to the sites I use --- just to their own speedcheck :lol:

Sorry... it's a general ISP rant. But it is all part of the picture. Or video.

 

[haisaikat]

agree with Thad, reminds me of this cartoon drawn some years back

 

[rikhav]

Face similar issues on my apple and android devices

But for some reason dont face such issues when seeing videos on youtube website by a pc

 

[Santy]

Solution: Force YouTube to buffer your entire video | PCWorld

Hope it helps you

Wow man. Its Awesome! Thanks for the link... For me, its the webpage of the year. :clapping: Its nice to see the grey bar hitting the right end, after several months.
No more:

Thanks to a browser add-on called YouTube Center, it's now possible to disable DASH, thus forcing YouTube to buffer your entire video.

BTW don't you think Youtube would work against it. I hope they don't!

 

[rikhav]

Any trick to start buffering when using youtube app on ios and android

 

[deba]

The one and only answer to all your problems is SERVER TRAFFIC. These problems are faced by almost all users of YouTube. No matter how fast your Internet connection is but it is not going to help unless YouTube servers are upgraded.

 

[nSinghal]

Don't us a computer (PC/mac) anymore so can't comment on the quality there. On my 3rd gen ipad, youtube has been showing some issues but I think its more coz of iOS 7 as it was working perfectly before and even the simple web browsing takes more time than it did on iOS 6.

I just realized the issues I was facing with youtube and web browsing were due to the DNS server I use to access Netflix instead of iOS 7. Removing the DNS resulted in the same browsing experience as iOS 6. Pages no longer take 5-10 seconds to start loading. Also, youtube app is working perfectly now too. Tried watching "lootera" which is officially available in youtube in HD by Balaji pictures. While I can't really tell on the iPad's 10" screen if its 720p or 1080p, I can definitely say it is in HD and atleast 720p if not better. Seeking to another point in time of video also took less than 5 seconds before it started playing again. So bottom line, for me atleast, youtube is working as good as I can expect a streaming service to. Both on ipad and ps3.

Whatever youtube's issues are its not the servers for sure. The performance in web page might have gone down coz of the additional measures they are taking to disallow people from downloading the videos. Can't really blame google for this though for a company as big as google should do an even better job and ensure performance even with the measures they have to take to stop people from downloading their videos.

Then, as cyber_cat points out, there is all the world-wide inter-ISP shenanigans, let alone the failings of the ISP on our own doorstep. I just let Airtel upgrade me from 4Mbs to 8Mbs. Does my internet run twice as fast? Does it hell! Why not? Because most of the internet is in America, and Airtel do not buy enough bandwidth to give me 8Mbs to the sites I use --- just to their own speedcheck :lol:

Sorry... it's a general ISP rant. But it is all part of the picture. Or video.

I may just be getting lucky here but I'm certainly getting 8mbps speed from airtel. Just downloaded a 312 mb game (from apple's US store) on the ipad and timed it. From the moment I entered my password, it took a total of 6min and 25 seconds to download and install the game. That's about 7mbps average speed. And I'm not even discounting the few seconds it took to start the download after entering the password or the time it took to install it after it was downloaded (took about 10 seconds after the status changed from "loading" to "installing").

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Solution: Force YouTube to buffer your entire video | PCWorld

Hope it helps you

Thank you. I don't have a lot of trouble with YouTube, but I'm going to try this one too.

My favourite YouTube companion is MediaHuman's YouTube to MP3 converter. When all you want is the sound, it downloads it without wasting bandwidth on the video. Clever stuff . Free .

 

[prashant_dv]

The one and only answer to all your problems is SERVER TRAFFIC. These problems are faced by almost all users of YouTube. No matter how fast your Internet connection is but it is not going to help unless YouTube servers are upgraded.

To narrow down more on this: I dont think Google would sit simply when their servers are NOT performing to the mark and i havent had a single instance till date where the services were not available. So, to say that YouTube servers are to be upgraded needs more specific data and reasoning as to why. I am able to use Youtube with HD videos ( agree that i am present in Europe ) with a slightly faster & stable connection (10Mbps) and i havent had a buffering issue at any time irrespective of whether it is a 1 minute or a full 2 hour movie. If YouTube servers were down, then it should be affecting world wide or you are mentioning youtube servers which serve India.

Just my two cents.. i am no expert, but thought of expressing my views on it.

I may just be getting lucky here but I'm certainly getting 8mbps speed from airtel. Just downloaded a 312 mb game (from apple's US store) on the ipad and timed it. .

You may be lucky for that speed, if it is then its quite good. But you also have to understand that ISP's cache most of the data and hence if somebody already has downloaded it the CACHE would be used to serve you and hence you would get a faster rate of download. Ask someone with similar speed and dfiferent ISP to download and check the rate of download speed. it might be different.

Regards,
Prashant D

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I may just be getting lucky here but I'm certainly getting 8mbps speed from airtel.

To be fair, I have not sat and looked at many speed tests. I did it once and got 5Mbs from a USA server. It would not surprise me if that were typical. Subjectively, I remember that the upgrade to 4Mbs was "wow," whereas this, so far, isn't. But hey, it only cost me an extra couple of hundred or there abouts.

 

[Holmes]

I would like to add one point. Those in-video ads are so annoying. No option to remove those crappy ads even by paying $$.